Yesaya 17:10

17:10 For you ignore ¹  the God who rescues you;

you pay no attention to your strong protector. ² 

So this is what happens:

You cultivate beautiful plants

and plant exotic vines. ³ 

Yesaya 18:5

18:5 For before the harvest, when the bud has sprouted,

and the ripening fruit appears, ⁴ 

he will cut off the unproductive shoots ⁵  with pruning knives;

he will prune the tendrils. ⁶ 

Yesaya 37:30

37:30 ⁷ “This will be your reminder that I have spoken the truth: ⁸  This year you will eat what grows wild, ⁹  and next year ¹⁰  what grows on its own. But the year after that ¹¹  you will plant seed and harvest crops; you will plant vines and consume their produce. ¹² 

[17:10]  ¹ tn Heb “you have forgotten” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).

[17:10]  ² tn Heb “and the rocky cliff of your strength you do not remember.”

[17:10]  ³ tn Heb “a vine, a strange one.” The substantival adjective זָר (zar) functions here as an appositional genitive. It could refer to a cultic plant of some type, associated with a pagan rite. But it is more likely that it refers to an exotic, or imported, type of vine, one that is foreign (i.e., “strange”) to Israel.

[18:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “and the unripe, ripening fruit is maturing.”

[18:5]  ⁵ tn On the meaning of זַלְזַל (zalzal, “shoot [of the vine] without fruit buds”) see HALOT 272 s.v. *זַלְזַל.

[18:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “the tendrils he will remove, he will cut off.”

[37:30]  ⁷ tn At this point the word concerning the king of Assyria (vv. 22-29) ends and the Lord again addresses Hezekiah and the people directly (see v. 21).

[37:30]  ⁸ tn Heb “and this is your sign.” In this case the אוֹת (’ot, “sign”) is a future reminder of God’s intervention designated before the actual intervention takes place. For similar “signs” see Exod 3:12 and Isa 7:14-25.

[37:30]  ⁹ sn This refers to crops that grew up on their own (that is, without cultivation) from the seed planted in past years.

[37:30]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and in the second year” (so ASV).

[37:30]  ¹¹ tn Heb “in the third year” (so KJV, NAB).

[37:30]  ¹² tn The four plural imperatival verb forms in v. 30b are used rhetorically. The Lord commands the people to plant, harvest, etc. to emphasize the certainty of restored peace and prosperity.